


Aftermath

by duckduckorangejuicerobertdowneyjr



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms, Love Never Dies - Lloyd Webber
Genre: Angst, Dark, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, TW: LND Raoul
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:07:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26524198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duckduckorangejuicerobertdowneyjr/pseuds/duckduckorangejuicerobertdowneyjr
Summary: No one gets a happy ending in Love Never Dies.(DARK FIC)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	Aftermath

Meg just killed her best friend. Oh God, Meg just killed her best friend. They’d known each other for decades, almost their entire lives, and Meg had shot her. Her sobbing was frantic and unending as she curled up in the corner of her mother’s flat. The woman herself was shaking too, desperately holding onto her daughter as she rocked back and forth, quiet reassurances being muttered to deaf ears.

She’d killed her best friend.

Meg pulled her head back and wailed to the grey ceiling above. She could barely feel her mother’s hand stroking through her blonde hair, messing it up even more than it had been. What had she done? What had she done?

Christine’s eyes were still on her, they were staring through every wall, looking with a mixture of confusion and cold accusation. That may have just been the stars, though. The stars and the moon and the ocean all judged her. The men all judged her. Everything judged her for what she’d done.

And all for the love of that vile, apathetic, masked man. Not love, not anymore. After all this, after seeing the dark red blend to turquoise on Christine's stomach, and the whites of the man's eyes shining in the darkness… the young boy's screaming… how could she associate the man with passion or music now? He had always been tainted with murder, but never so red.

She buried her head in her hands, covered in her friend’s invisible blood, and felt the last crumpled shreds of innocence leave her. Meg had been clutching them so, so tightly to her bruised chest! She was a fool. She’d never be clean again.

_*_

Madame Giry held her hysterical daughter tightly. The gun had been thrown away long ago, the docks long abandoned by the pair, and Christine’s death nearly two months past. Still her daughter screamed and cried.

But surely, it was her fault, the Madame. She should never have allowed Meg anywhere near the ill-intentioned brutes, no matter what they offered. She was blind, so blind, to think that the phantom caged was a worse sight than her daughter, _her daughter_ , her flesh and blood, in the arms of strange men. The damn phantom, he manipulated her. He twisted her mind and sense against her family. She was almost glad that he was surely suffering Christine’s loss as badly as she was suffering not only the death of Christine, but also her precious daughter’s sanity.

The law never discovered that Meg was the shooter. The phantom had apparently taken care of all of the funeral arrangements, without any input from her or the grieving husband and his family. But the doctors she contacted for Meg must have known that something traumatic had occurred. The pitying looks reflected in Meg’s vacant, watery eyes. She never smiled anymore. She barely moved but to sit in the corner or stare blankly through the window to the waving sea. When Madame Giry pulled the curtains to block the view, she stared nonetheless.

She cried, she cried endlessly and sometimes her mother cried with her. What else was there to do? In one fell swoop they’d both lost everything.

Everything.

_*_

Raoul swallowed down the last few drops of liquid courage. He knew he would need it. His head growing foggier, his eyes becoming more shadowed, his cheeks becoming more gaunt every day, he was tired.

He hadn’t even been there when she breathed her last. Their son had to retrieve him from the bar's taps. What a failure of a husband he was. What happened to him?

The tears started anew and he slammed his fist into the desk. His eyes were surely bloodshot by now, and he just wanted to stop crying. He wanted to turn back the clock and be there for her, be there for his son. Or maybe he could just have never been there at all. Leave her to her damn ghost. She chose him in the end, anyway. Oh God, why was he blaming her?

It was the phantom- no. No more blaming others. If Raoul hadn’t begun drinking, he never would have harmed his family. If he hadn’t begun gambling, his family would not have cut him off. He had hurt both sides of his loved ones and now revenge was theirs, he supposed. If he had never been, well, _Raoul_ , he wouldn’t be like this, now would he?

He once ran into the sea to retrieve her scarf. That part of him had been drowned by liquor. It was his fault. Why did he do this to himself? He brushed away more tears. Another bottle opened. It was his fault his parents disowned him. It was his fault his brother never replied to his letters, no matter how desperate they were. It was his fault his son was gone, and better off without his drunk, abusive, _fake father_.

It was his fault Christine was laying dead on the pier. _He killed Christine_. He’d lost everything, and he was so _damn_ tired. He finished off the bottle.

The glass joined the others littering the floor of the small room. He had spent his last coins to have it for the night. He stood. His mind screamed at him through a haze of alcohol, terrible memories of a lasso and a beautiful woman. The phantom won, in the end, he reminded himself. Raoul? He was never good enough.

Swallowing his fears, Raoul climbed wobbly onto the chair, and slipped his head through the noose.

_*_

Gustave wanted his mother and father. When his mother was leaving, she said Mr. Y was his real dad, but that made no sense to him. If Mr. Y was his real dad, why did he never care for him before now? That’s what fathers were, weren’t they? People who lived with your mother and loved you. His father had loved him a lot. At least, for a long time he did. He took a break from that, but he had just needed a break, right? Everyone needed breaks from some things.

Gustave doesn’t know if Mr. Y loves him. He says that he does, but when Gustave has nightmares about his mother, Mr. Y doesn’t know that he wants to be hugged. He stares in near confusion, sometimes he cries too. Sometimes he doesn’t even come to his room after Gustave awakens screaming. He waits and waits, but the door never opens. Fleck says that he's moody, that he sometimes travels the city at night and is away for periods of time. Gustave doesn’t know why.

Mr. Y demands perfection from his voice and music. He started giving him music lessons, proper music lessons, but Gustave couldn’t help but hate them. Whenever he made a mistake, Mr. Y glared at him. Sometimes he yelled. Gustave knew it wasn’t truly at him, that Mr. Y was just moody, but he still didn’t understand. He could never just sing or play for fun.

Sometimes Mr. Y took him to his carnival, but after a few weeks of it, Gustave had seen it all. He had figured out how the various machines worked, and how many of the oddities were faked. It grew boring, especially since Mr. Y discouraged any kids his age from approaching. Whenever Gustave asked Mr. Y to take off his mask so he could decipher him too, he seemed so sad and angry, Gustave regretted asking.

After another nightmare left him sobbing to wakefulness, Gustave thought of running away. He hated it here, he realized. He hated the endless darkness. He missed his mother. He missed his father, his real father, no matter what his mother said. Mr. Y had forbade him to talk about him. He wanted to be held in the sunlight. Why couldn’t he have that?

…What did he do wrong?

**Author's Note:**

> Yeeaaaahhhh...
> 
> Sorry about this! Much love to you guys, don't go taking LND too seriously now.


End file.
